Haruomi Hosono
renowned Japanese musician, best known internationally as a key member of the rock band Happy End and the pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra with Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
renowned Japanese musician, best known internationally as a key member of the rock band Happy End and the pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra with Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Benzaiten
World music and ethno sounds with an obvious Japanese origin meet progressive rock and psyche. The result is a captivating piece of melodic and deeply atmospheric music that paints pictures of life in ancient Japan into your mind when you lay back, close your eyes and listen closely with your thoughts turned off. If Pink Floyd were Japanese their music might have sounded like that. The frequency of the arrangements on „Benzaiten“ reminds of what our English heroes have created in the early to mi…
Alfa/Yen Records 1980 - 1987: Techno Pop And Other Electronic Adventures In Tokyo
Recording technology was completely revolutionized in the 80s by the multitrack recorder, with the popularity of 24-channel SSL consoles sweeping the world. Japanese pop music created during this wave of digital improvement is now recognized worldwide as ""City Pop."" Techno Pop was another offshoot born of the same revolution. Precise, computer-controlled beats produced by groups like Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) introduced a different type of sound to the masses. By now, these works have been …
Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge
Double LP edition. A classic from Haruomi Hosono’s late ’80s and ’90s abstract electronica period, Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge is a sublimely inviting ambient album with touches of acid house, downtempo pop, and ethereal trip-hop. Standout “Laughter Meditation” opens up the album with gorgeous zither and kalimba from Laraaji, a peaceful 4-to-the-floor beat, and spoken word. Medicine Compilation from the Quiet Lodge features ultimate ambient music that invites listeners to another w…
The Tale Of Genji
Another favorite from the Haromi Hosono canon. This was the score for the first animated adaptation of The Tale of Genji, a sprawling piece of 11th century literature written by noblewoman Shikibu Murasaki, considered by many to be the first modern novel in recorded history. (Isao Tomita later write his own symphonic adaptation of the story.) The anime was directed by Gisaburō Sugii, and while it only covers a small part of the epic storyline, the score is highly ambitious.
Unlike much of Hosono…
Omni Sight Seeing
This was his first studio album in four years since his last album, "Endless Talking", and the first release since moving to Epic/Sony Records. This work was the result of sessions and collaborations with Arabian musicians, with an inclination towards the 'world music' that was gaining attention at the time. Deployed often in pop culture as punchline, Hosono takes such sight-seeing and transforms it into a metaphor for sample-heavy electronic music, drawing from various cultures and weaving them…
Après-Midi
"Another gem from the Yen Records treasure trove (Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi production). Cheeky, unhurried, fairly minimal synth pop, with a dusting of tittering bleeps, bloops, and sleigh bells for dimension. Mostly dry and Disneyland plump, but of course nothing Hosono is quite what it seems. Après-Midi is far from simplistic–there are plenty of well-executed jabs at western pop music (and culture), and then there’s the surprise “Catchball,” which is a deep, dark grinding proto-tec…
The Aegean Sea
*2024 much needed repress!!* Victory present a reissue of Haruomi Hosono, Takahiko Ishikawa, and Masataka Matsutoya's The Aegean Sea originally released in 1979. The album is somewhat of a companion piece to the previous year's Pacific (V 25AH426). A beautiful piece of Japanese smooth fusion-jazz with elements of traditional Greek music and Balearic grooves, it's one of Hosono's cleanest and most focused works to date. Long sought-after by collectors, this record is nearly impossible to find in …
Aiiro no Kisetsu
The treasured Japanese soft rock album produced by Haruomi Hosono is finally reissued in analog LP format! The only album "Aiiro no Kisetsu" (The Season of The Color of Love) (original release date: July 1975) by the group "Kaze Chorus Dan" (Wind Chorus Group) from the Yamaha Popular Song Contest is reissued on analog vinyl. Haruomi Hosono participated fully as producer, lyricist, composer, arranger, and player.The beautiful chorus work of mixed voices, the tight performance by the Tin Pan Alley…
Cochin Moon
Pressed on Opaque Yellow Wax. Remastered form the original analog master tapes. One of the holy grails of fourth-world avant-ambient synthesis, and believe it or not, this was a Record Store Day release in Japan this year. Originally released a few months after Haruomi Hosono’s 1978 Paraiso LP — famous for featuring the first trio grouping of the band that would become Yellow Magic Orchestra — Hosono’s Cochin Moon, an album credited to himself and famed graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo, who provid…
Pacific
2024 repress. Victory present a reissue of Pacific, originally released in 1978. Reuniting the best session musicians Japan had to offer to make an album that would evoke the atmospheres of the South Pacific islands, the kind of places Japanese people spend their vacations. Pacific is a treat to the ears; its theme of the southern Pacific ocean and its warm cerulean waters relax its listeners with a fusion of city pop, soft jazz, and that good old 1970s funk while remaining surprisingly fully in…
N . D . E
First ever vinyl pressing of Haruomi Hosono's full album N.D.E. Featuring Goh Hotoda, Yasuhiko Terada, Yasuaki Shimizu, Bill Laswell & François Kevorkian. Ever since his days as a pioneer of Japanese electronic music in the 1970s, Haruomi Hosono has constantly pushed forwards musically. The 1990s was a particularly fertile decade for the Yellow Magic Orchestra co-founder. Following two decades spent creating and releasing innovative electronic pop, imaginary sound worlds and inspirational ambie…
Hosono House
*2023 stock* The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono has put his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as a session player, producer, and auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit late…
Koi wa Momo Iro / Fuku wa Uchi Oni wa Soto
To be released in July 2021. Super Fuji Discs presents Sacred Water. One of the two independent albums released in 1982 by Yoshio Karashima, who is known in Japan as an astrologer, an abstract painter and an object artist as well as a musician. The six tracks on this album are based on two years of improvising with synthesizers, drawing on various images and thoughts of water, with a mystical atmosphere and an ambient/cosmic feeling that makes it hard to believe that he started playing synthesiz…
Hochono House
Hochono House is a re-imagining of Haruomi Hosono’s 1973 solo debut album Hosono House. Recorded 45 years after The Band-like sessions that produced the rootsy Japanese Americana classic, Hochono House is an entirely solo affair, with Hosono himself handling all the recording, engineering, programming, arrangements, instruments, and singing. It’s a perfect distillation of the various styles Hosono has cultivated over his 50 year career, from his folky beginnings through his techno-pop era, to pu…